


Buying the Farm

by Wordplaysam



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 06:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13698735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wordplaysam/pseuds/Wordplaysam
Summary: After Starbuck's viper explodes, the pilots hold an auction for her stuff, where Helo hopes to answer a question he's had for years.





	Buying the Farm

The day after Cadet—no, Ensign Karl Agathon graduated from the Academy, he woke up entirely naked, save for a single athletic sock. 

The sock was not on his foot.

He groaned, rubbing his forehead in futile attempt to soothe his raging hangover. He lay there for as long as he could, but the need to pee was pretty overwhelming and so he staggered to his feet.

It was then that he realized that the clothes he had been wearing last night were gone.

Well, “clothes.” Last he could remember, he’d been down to boxers, drinking ambrosia straight from the bottle, dancing to the beat of the music with moves that at the time he thought seemed rather suave but in retrospect were probably terrible.

But all that was beside the point, the point being that his boxers were gone.

They were his favorite pair. They were covered in little orange traffic cones, and he’d been wearing them the night he got his first kiss. Less than a year later they were the very first pair a girl had ever taken off of him. He’d even been wearing them the first day he met Kara Thrace, although he’d hated her at the time and she him. He’d worn them on the day he took his ECO exit exams despite them being wildly unregulatation, and he’d passed with flying colors, enough to secure a fantastic post-graduation post on  _Triton_.

They were lucky, obviously. And Karl Agathon wanted. Them. Back.

The disappearance of his boxers were one thing. That could have happened in any number of ways. But the placement of the sock seemed to point to one prankster in particular:

“I don’t have your frakking boxers,” Kara said in the mess hall, drinking her coffee like it was the only thing keeping her upright. “Maybe you left them in some girl’s rack.”

“Kara, I’m serious,” he said.

“And I’m serious, Karl!” she protested.

***

But he never stopped believing. He snuck a look at her stuff every chance he got. Secretly pawed through her underwear drawer on more than one occasion. He even managed one last look at her apartment in Delphi.

“We’re never coming back here, you know,” he said as they headed up the stairs. “Never. So if there’s anything you wanted to grab…”

“Right,” she said. She doubled back to the tape player, popping her father’s tape out of it.

“Anything else?” he asked. “Anything you stole off of your best friend during a certain graduation blowout?”

“I promise you they’re not here,” she replied.

“Not here?” he asked. “But you do admit you have them somewhere?  _Galactica_ , maybe?”

“Give it a rest, Helo!” she replied. “I don’t have your frakkin’ boxers. Dear _Gods_ , this is going to be a long road trip.”

***

The full military funeral had been nothing less than Starbuck deserved. Everyone in their dress uniforms and medals. A rousing rendition of the Colonial Anthem, which had always brought a tear to Starbuck’s eye. A recitation of her promotions and commendations. But as patriotic and noble as that had been, tonight's festivities felt better, more Starbuck: music, liquor, frequent glasses raised in toast to her crazier stunts.

There were rules to this particular game. People didn’t talk about them, they’d never been set to paper or anything so formal, but everyone knew them. The bidding could go extremely high on things like condoms or toothpaste or working pens. The longer they’d been out here, the rarer commodities got, the more these things sold for.

But when it came to sentimental things, everyone stayed out of the major players’ ways. It was counterintuitive, but you actually spent less money, when it was someone you were close to who bought the farm. No one wanted to be the asshole who drove up the bidding on someone’s dead girlfriend’s journal. Who knew when your girlfriend’s auction would be, after all.

Best friends counted, so everyone was giving Helo a pretty wide berth. Not as wide as they were giving Apollo, slumming it at Joe’s on a night off from the Baltar trial, nor as wide as they would have been giving the newly-minted Longshot, if he hadn’t been passed-out drunk by the time they were even a fourth of the way through. But a wide berth all the same.

Helo had gotten the whole lot of her pre- _Galactica_  pictures for a steal, though he planned on picking out the ones with Zak for Lee. Some paint, for Hera once she passed the finger-painting stage. Their workout mixtape, which technically half-belonged to him anyway, but he didn’t mind the single-cubit bid.

“Women’s C-Bucs warm-up jacket,” Hotdog said. “Tag inside Winters, Sue-Shaun, #28. Bidding starts at five cubits.”

“I’ve got five,” Helo said.

“Six,” a woman said behind him, and Helo turned to look. Oh. Another of the brand-new pilots—Wideout, a steadying arm around Longshot as he leaned heavily against her.

“You got seven, Helo?” Hotdog asked.

“Naw,” he replied. He was just going to give it to Sam anyway. Whether that’s what Barolay planned to do with it, or if she wanted her teammate’s old jacket for herself, Helo wasn’t going to stand in her way. Besides, he needed to keep his eyes on the prize.

“Six cubits to Wideout,” Hotdog replied. She balled the jacket up, put it onto the table, and carefully slid Longshot off of her, his head resting on it like a pillow.

“Our next item is an Aquarian calendar from about ten years before the attacks,” Hotdog said, and Helo froze. The worlds end, and somehow she manages to still be holding onto  _that_?

“I’m opening the bid at twenty cubits,” Helo shouted. Most of them knew he was Aquarian. Let them think it was a world-loyalty thing.

But Hotdog grinned at him. Well, frak. Bastard must’ve already seen the page in question. “Sorry, CAG, let me finish. The calendar is called  _Frozen Planet, Steamy Bodies: The Men of Aquaria_ , and Starbuck got Mr. Februarius himself to sign it.”

Let him be finished, Karl hoped. Let him be finished. But Hotdog wasn’t, clearing his throat dramatically.

“A-a-ahem.  _To Kara, who’s welcome to ball handle whenever she wants (no seriously, how’s now?) XXX, your—_ ” and then Hotdog displayed the page in question to the bar with a flourish “ _Karl_.”

Eighteen, fresh off his high school pyramid team’s surprisingly strong run at the Worlds Championship. Naked except for his wrist guard, cleats, and a well-placed pyramid ball.

“Oh, my gods,” Racetrack gasped, and the rest of the room erupted into laughter as Helo’s face burned.

“Aw, look at how  _cute_  you were,” Athena teased, which really wasn’t helping matters any. “And that hair! Our bid for twenty’s still open, Hotdog!”

“Ladies, you really going to let this go to waste on the wife?” Hotdog asked.

“Twenty-two,” Racetrack declared, and Skulls whooped and poured her a shot, which she pounded back.

“Twenty-six,” Gaeta, a surprise bidder, technically not allowed, but Hotdog nodded his head in acceptance.

The fight for the calendar pulled in seven different officers, which he supposed was flattering. Athena held strong, but the four other women and two men weren’t giving her the same respect accorded to Helo, Longshot, and Apollo. This wasn’t sentimental. This was pure fun, laughing and drinking and making jokes at Helo’s expense. Which, he supposed he didn’t actually mind, as it was only appropriate for the final party for one Kara Thrace.

“Fifty-one,” Showboat shouted.

“Fifty-two,” Racetrack replied. “I could go all night, you frakkers!”

“Fifty-three!” from Gaeta.

“We’ve only got sixty,” Athena murmured.

“Stop bidding,” he told her. He didn’t care if they were out of cubits tomorrow. Frak if they really mattered on this ship anymore. But there was still one thing, one item he needed to make sure he had the cubits for. She looked at him, questioning, and he ducked his head, kissing the side of her mouth. “You don’t need a naked picture,” he said.

Racetrack put in a good run, but Gaeta won out in the end. Hotdog tossed the calendar to him, and he triumphantly held it over his head while several bridge bunnies clapped him on the back. 

Hotdog turned back to his box. “All right, last item of the night,  _Dreilide Thrace, Live at—_ ” 

What? Helo stood up, knocking his chair back in the process. “That can’t be the last thing,” he said. He was watching. They hadn’t come up yet. “Turn the box over.”

Hotdog tossed Helo the box. “Look for yourself,” he replied.

“Boxers!” Helo shouted. “There’s supposed to be a pair of boxers.”

“Yours?” Racetrack purred, bold off the alcohol and her loss.

“Frak!” he shouted, slamming his fist down on the table, glasses clattering. In a moment, the entire tone of the room changed, everyone falling silent all at once.

“Karl—” Athena began, but he wasn’t listening. She reached out to him, but he could hardly see her, everything clouded over.

He grabbed the edge of the table and turned it over, alcohol spilling to the floor, bottles breaking. “Frak, frak, frak!” He was vaguely aware of Apollo and Skulls’ hands on his arms, but he lashed out against them. Skulls let go, stumbling back into the crowd, but Apollo held firm.

“Not in here,” Apollo said quietly.

And somehow, Helo found himself stumbling through corridor outside, eyes welling over, kicking at anything that happened to be in his way. 

“Captain,” Apollo began, and Helo lost the energy to keep walking, slumping against the bulkhead and sliding to the floor. He pressed against the corners of his eyes, trying to keep the tears in.

“Karl…” Apollo said, sinking down on his heels to Helo's level, clearly uncomfortable. To some degree, Helo understood. This wasn’t exactly what Apollo was good at. 

And besides, Helo had been the strong one. Apollo, Sam, even the Admiral, had all cracked a little, while anyone but Athena would have said that Helo hadn’t cried at all. Had held himself together admirably.

“When we were still at the Academy,” Helo finally said by way of explanation, “we made this pact. We’d get hitched when we were fifty, if I wasn’t married with kids and she wasn’t dead. We were so young, it was a joke. But I mean, on some level I was always prepared to bury her. I just didn’t realize it’d be this…”

“…hard?”

“Yeah.”

The silence between them was deafening.

“What are you going to miss the most?” Apollo asked.

There were so many things. So many things that he couldn’t define, about her Kara-ness and the light that made her her. All of the pieces of their long and sturdy friendship. He tried to find the best way to say it.

“Workout and then a beer after CAP,” Helo said. “Sometimes the promise of it was the only thing that’d keep me awake on a long one. You?”

Apollo seemed to be having the same problem. Finally: “That game where she’d try to lure me into saying something dirty over the comm,” Apollo said, and Helo stifled a laugh.

“She did that to me, too,” he replied. 

“We never stood a chance, did we?” Apollo asked, and Helo didn’t know if he meant her game or everything about her. Both were true.

Athena stepped out into the corridor. Apollo turned to look at her and stood. “Hey,” she said, putting a hand on Helo’s shoulder, “let’s get you to bed, okay?”

Apollo stuck out his hand, and Helo grabbed it, rising to his feet. They followed through the motion into the quickest of embraces, a brotherhood of men who’d lost something dear. “You ever need to punch something, give me a shout,” Apollo said.

“I will,” he said, taking a step. But he stopped, paused, needed to explain to Apollo this last thing. “I’m never going to find out if she stole my boxers or not.” And somehow this was the saddest part of all. “Nearly a decade, I thought she was a frakkin’ liar, but now I’ll never know.”

"I get it," Apollo said.

Athena slid an arm around his waist, and they went home.


End file.
